a wild boar not bothered about humans

visiting rustic pulau ubin on a weekday is a feel-good experience. you don't have to put up with the crowds at the jetty, while waiting for the 10-minute bumboat ride at $2.50 a trip; at the bicycle rental shop, you have time to choose a bike that suits your needs; at the visitor centre, the npark people can attend to your queries in a chit-chat manner; and at chek jawa, you can explore the place at leisure. you do not have to worry whether the tower will be able to take the weight of so many height seekers.

the bonus is that you may get to see things that will have normally been scared away by the throngs of visitors and the noise that they create on a weekend. today, we saw two wild boars, three oriental pied hornbills and an owl.




this is also the first time i managed to get close enough to take a picture of this shy creature. i would not say that this wild boar that we came across near chek jawa was friendly but it was definitely not bothered by the humans around it. earlier on , we had seen another one dashing across the track, just ahead of us. the first time i had seen wild boars was in desaru, after a golf game. on our own mainland, i have seen them at lim chu kang.

can you spot the hornbill?

the hornbills were on some trees near the resort - which used to be known as marina resort but it now has a different name - and subsequently, they flew to the roof of one of the buildings. the owl caught us by surprise, so i did not manage to capture it on digital image. one of the hornhills appeared to be performing some dance/ritual on the roof-top.

i had wanted to explore the western part of the island after reading about the ketam mountain bike park in this blog. however, my friend, who have been to ubin several times but had not done the mangrove boardwalk at chek jawa was quite insistent on visiting that part of the island. i would have missed photographing the wild boar if we had stuck to my original plan. anyway, there is always time for another visit to the island.

at the mangrove reserve, there are quite a number of nipah palms. it is always the 'attap chee' that i would see but this time around, i saw some flowers on the palms. as it was high tide during our visit, we did not get to see all those creatures that are shown on colourful brochures of chek jawa. however, we did see two white bellied eagles, with one of them successfully snatching a fish while skimming over the surface of the water in the sea.

from the visitor centre, i walked to the jetty where i saw this formation of rocks - which together form what is called pulau sekudu. it reminded me of my younger days when, on some weekends, we would paddle the sampans from pasir ris to pulau ubin. on the way, we would make a rest-stop at this rock island to look for shells. i remember we referred to it as 'frog island'.

i do not know if it is my imagination. somehow, the disused quarries, of which there are five, at pulau ubin, especially the surface of the water, appear so much placid, cleaner and nicer than those on the mainland.

balestier group at chek jawa

the coastal loop boardwalk

the visitor's centre

the antique light switch

from coastal loop to mangrove boardwalk

the 5 overseas walkers

today, a reduced strength balestier group - five of us - showed up at changi creek to make the overseas trip to pulau ubin. we decided against taking any form of transport on the island and chose to walk from the jetty to chek jawa, the much talked about place on the island.

the last trip i made to pulau ubin, at the beginning of this year, the fare was $2.00. today, we paid $2.50 one way. the fare to penggerang has also been raised from $8.00 to $9.00. the charge for bicycle remained at $2.00 per bicycle.

there seems to be no lack of bicycles for rent on the island. along the way to chek jawa, we came across many groups on rented bikes - mountain bikes, tandem bikes, normal bikes and bikes with balancers. there were groups which opted for the taxi service on the island. no more reject taxis from the mainland; they use vans and jeeps.

a monitor lizard crossed our path but for me, someone who is a frequent visitor to sungei buloh wetland, it did not cause any excitement. the excitement was to come later after we had finished our walk at chek jawa. as we were walking back, two wild boars, the first one larger and heavier and the following one, smaller - i think the smaller one might have been a wild sow - came charging out of the clearing in front of us. we were stunned for a moment and did not move until the two pigs were clearly out of sight.

at chek jawa, there is a coastal loop boardwalk which joins up with the mangrove boardwalk. because it was high tide, we did not see any of the much talked about sea creatures on the sea bed but as we neared the mangrove area, we saw shoals of fish and some mudskippers.

near the end of the boardwalk is the 21 metre jejawi tower which we climbed up. a guide was telling a group that they could see the white-bellied sea eagle from the tower on their lucky days.

our final stop was the visitor's centre which is actually a tudor style brick building built in the 1930s. we explored the house and its surroundings and one of the old fixtures on the wall caught our attention - the old round light switch.

lunch was at changi village food centre.